


like a sucker punch

by defcontwo



Category: Captain America (Comics), Marvel 616, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 09:18:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3244346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>God, but he was so stupid in love back then.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like a sucker punch

**Author's Note:**

> There's a blink and you miss it reference to underaged sex in the form of Bucky fooling around a bit before he joins the Army/meets Steve. 
> 
> Also, spoilers for Bucky Barnes - The Winter Soldier #4.

> _“Faithful sidekick? What am I, Rin Tin Tin?”_

.

The comics are a real fucking riot, when you get down to it. He’s sore about them, sure, just like he’ll always be a little sore about every snide comment Namor’s ever sent his way for the past four years, like bits of his pride were torn out of his skin every time and put on display for all to see. The flush of shame creeps up the back of his neck a little easier than he’d like. He’s trying to get better about it, these days. Just because he’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of the goddamn Third Reich doesn’t mean he ain’t aware of it.

That dumb kid, he’s a pretty fiction, a ridiculous lie that only exists within the pages of those flimsy comics. He tries to ignore it, tries not to pick up the comics or to set much stock in those propaganda newsreels but it’s like picking at a barely healed wound and every time, Bucky closes his eyes and imagines that he can see every disappointed look his father ever sent his way reflected back up at him. There you go, Mister Barnes, proof positive that James always was a goddamn joke that wouldn’t amount to much. 

But still, when you get down to the brass tacks of it -- it is a fucking riot and a half. Folks back home are eating this shit up with a spoon, taking the comics back home to their kids so they can read all about Captain America and Bucky. Captain America and Bucky -- the two wholesome, patriotic heroes out to save humanity for God and country because that’s all they are to the world outside. Nobody’s got any goddamn clue that they’re a pair of queers, and that Captain America’s an Irish Catholic artist to boot. Hell, Bucky spent the greater part of his fifteenth year screwing around with whichever new recruit would have him because no matter which way you slice it, there just ain’t that much to do on an Army base when you’re young and horny and overqualified for the shit hand you’ve been dealt. 

Just last week, they’d had him up in a tree for hours and hours on end, long enough that his muscles all cramped up and he swore to God he was finally getting trench foot, all just so he could shoot out the tires of a Nazi supply truck. And when it was all over, when they’d debriefed him and sent him on his way, Steve had dragged him into the nearest tent and bent him over the first hard surface that they could find. It was a sloppy fuck and just this side of frantic, just like Steve knew he liked it after a rough mission, like every inch of him was getting wrung out and put back into place. They’d scattered maps and papers all over the ground, valuable Allied intel hitting the dirt with a dull thud, and it was all Bucky could do to keep himself quiet, biting down on the hard leather of his red gloves. 

And they’ve got him in the comics smiling real wide, saying shit like “golly, Cap,” and “gee willikers,” like he’s some fucking Protestant virginal throwback who’s never so much as fired a real weapon. 

It’s hilarious, is what he’s saying. Like they’re pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes and getting away with it. 

Some part of him, the part of him that’s still a little younger and more hopeful than he’d ever like to admit, thinks that hell, maybe they’ll get lucky. Maybe they really can keep on doing this forever. 

He should've known better than that.

.

Steve is so hesitant, the first time.

There’s never any doubt of where this is all headed, not once they get started. They are worn down from months of wanting and on the edge of their metaphorical tether, besides; there was never going to be any waiting, not with this. 

Bucky just looks up one day and figures, what the hell. We could die tomorrow, right? So he plucks up all the courage that he has left in his weary, frozen bones and drags Steve down by the collar of his flak jacket. And it is a loose, easy sort of dance, the steps laid out from start to finish, from Steve’s hand curled around the nape of his neck to Bucky’s fingers fumbling with the buckles of their belts. An inevitability, probably, a moment they’ve been building up to for the past three years, but Steve keeps slowing right down just as Bucky wants to go, go, go. 

It isn’t the fumblings of inexperience; Bucky knows all too well exactly how those go. No, this is something else. Steve kisses with a practiced care that feels a little too precise, a little too much like he’s holding himself back, trying to keep himself from letting go. 

Bucky finds himself annoyed and charmed him in equal measure, which is pretty much par for the course with everything else that Steve does, so he decides to take it in stride. 

Bucky hooks a foot under Steve’s ankle and flips them, pinning Steve’s arms above his head and pressing him down into the cold, hard ground of their tent and Steve, Steve just lets him do it. Of course he does. Bucky’s never been stupid about this. He knows the way Steve looks at him, with the kind of tenderness that gets men killed in war; there’s not a whole lot that Steve wouldn’t let him do, he figures. That much has always been true. 

“Pal, you don’t have to treat me like I’m gonna break. Trust me, Cap, this ain’t my first rodeo,” Bucky says. 

Bucky’s fingers go slack, so Steve trails his hands up the length of Bucky’s arms, tracing patterns into exposed skin. “You’ve done this before?” 

For all of his careful composure, Steve’s voice is thick with want and it catches onto the edges of Bucky’s frayed nerves, settling his annoyance. 

Bucky huffs. “Probably more times than you have. I’m your partner, remember? Not your fuckin’ sidekick. The rules don’t change just ‘cause now you’re aiming to get your hands down my pants, Steve.” 

Steve raises both eyebrows like the cheeky asshole that he so rarely is around anyone else. “What, just my hands?” 

Bucky leans in real close, pressing his hips down into Steve’s and smirking when it gets the reaction he was angling after: Steve letting out a loud, strangled groan that Bucky has to silence with a kiss. 

“Well. We’ll start with that and then see where the day takes us, alright, partner?”

.

This is the war:

He has dirt underneath his fingernails every damn day for four years straight no matter how many days leave they get and how many cold showers he gets awarded with. He wears the same shitty, mismatched boots until the sole on the left boot start to fall off, and then he goes and steals some rope from a dead Kraut and ties it together and keeps on going. 

He keeps his rifle in top shape no matter what hell gets thrown at them; it is always clean and polished and good to go and he never, ever names it because he doesn’t care what anyone else tries to tell him, that’s just a weird fucking thing to do. 

He kills people. He kills a lot of people and he can’t even take the time to live with it, to tear it up and put it back together again in a shape that makes sense in his mind because he spends just as much time with his hands stained red trying to stem the blood spouting from a guy that could’ve been a friend. 

He gives his last D-ration to a little girl in Holland who reminds him of Becca and he strips off his navy-blue coat without a thought and hands it over to a too-thin, shivering boy named Max in Austria in ‘44. He finally loses his left boot rescuing a drowning dog from a river in England while the dog’s owner stands idly by and screams from the shore. 

He likes to think that he saves more lives than he takes. If that’s the best thing they can say about him, after, then he guesses maybe he can live with the nightmares. 

Sam tells him once, later, about how Steve was always telling stories about him, about who he was during the war. Sam says that there were days when Steve could barely shut up about him. Bucky wonders if this wasn’t some strange sort of penance, a way to breathe life into reality and hold it sacred while the rest of the world champions its false history, its comic books and its newsreels and its ridiculous costumed superheroes. 

Sure, maybe they _were_ ridiculous costumed superheroes but they were people, first. They were just two idiots who loved each other a whole lot more than they should’ve, for all that they met in the middle of a goddamn war-zone. 

He can’t blame Steve for telling stories. 

He doesn’t want to forget a single second of it, either. Not again.

.

This is after the war:

No, strike that. 

That part, he doesn’t want to re-live.

.

“You here to say I told you so?”

She cuts a small figure, tucked close as she is to the edge of the rooftop terrace of this Upper East Side apartment, looking like she might get swallowed whole by the over-sized purple sweatshirt that just about hangs off her. He shouldn’t be here; he’s supposed to be a dead man. Still, Kate’s not all that surprised to see him. 

Not that he thought she would be. Sharp as a tack, that Kate Bishop. 

“I’m not in the business of I-told-you-so’s, kid,” Bucky says, falling down to a crouch next to her and passing along the bottle of whisky that he brought with him. Kate takes it gratefully, unscrewing the cap and taking a large swig. 

“I’ll do it for you, then,” Kate says, coughing through the burn of the alcohol, all raspy and wet. “You were right. None of us had any business doing what we were doing.” 

She pauses to take another swig of whisky. He should probably take it away from her, now. He can tell from the flush high in her cheeks already that she’s not much of a drinker, that she’s well on her way to spending half the night wrapped around the porcelain of a toilet but sometimes you need nights like those. And, well, he’s never been much in the business of being a role model, either. 

“I got my best friend killed, Bucky,” she says, small and hurt. And this -- this is why he’s here, isn’t it, because boy, she reminds him too much of himself when he was her age. Twenty years old and already so filled to the brim with guts and heart and yet, somehow still surprised whenever the world sees fit to tear her down a peg or five. 

Bucky takes the bottle back from her and takes a sip before setting it to the side, just out of her reach. “Bullshit,” he says. 

“What?” Kate asks, taken aback. 

“Did you make her do it? Lie to her, manipulate her in any way?” 

“No,” Kate says. “No, I didn’t. But -- ”

“No, buts, Bishop. Cassie Lang made a choice. Don’t dishonor it by making her death about your guilt. That’s a shitty fucking way to remember someone,” Bucky says, and God, this has gotten too personal too fast, like he’s been flayed wide open. Only this time, he’s gone and done it to himself. Typical Barnes move if there ever was one. 

“Fuck you,” Kate says, leaning across him to retrieve the bottle, twisting it around between her hands before taking another long sip, draining the bottle. He was right; she is a little bit too much like him. 

“I call it how I see it, kid.” 

Kate groans, and then punches him in the arm, hissing as her fist makes contact with his arm. He’s guessing that that hurt her a whole lot more than it hurt him. “God, you’re such an ass. Kid, really? How many times did people used to call you that?” 

Bucky snorts. “Logan _still_ calls me that.” 

“And does it piss you off still?” 

Bucky shrugs. Yeah, it pisses him off but he’s backed himself into a corner, here. He’s not good at this, at drawing the line between who he was and who he is and figuring out what to keep and what to toss aside. Truth be told, it gets his back up like nothing else when Logan calls him ‘kid,’ like the echo of every shitty newsreel he ever had to sit through. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Kate says. “You know….I like you, Bucky. You’re kind of like our patron saint -- our grumpy, murderous occasionally unwashed patron saint who gives liquor to twenty-year olds. But you could be less of an asshole about it, sometimes.” 

“From where I’m sitting,” Bucky starts, and then pauses. Maybe he’s gone a little too far, here, but he’s never been a big fan of dishonesty. “From where I’m sitting, takin’ after me didn’t work out so great for you.” 

Kate twirls the empty bottle around, holding it up to the light and watching the sun bounce off it before shrugging and setting it aside. She goes dead-still, like she’s working through something, and it’s one of those necessary habits of every good sharp shooter that’s hard to miss and just as hard to shake. Kate exhales, like her mind’s all made up, before scooching closer to him on the ledge and lifting his arm up so that she can tuck right underneath it. 

“Wasn’t all bad, though,” Kate says, at last. “Right? I mean, it wasn’t for you, was it?” 

Bucky swallows hard, and the aftertaste of the whisky goes bitter in the back of his throat. 

There was Toro sneaking him in a birthday cake, only to have it all go to shit just as fast, and still, the two of them just laughed the whole way through it. There was the rush of satisfaction at Namor’s hard-earned approval. There was that bone-deep sense of conviction that he once had that what they were doing, maybe sometimes it was ugly, sure, but it was always, always right. 

And there was Steve. 

Steve, whining and groaning on wet mornings as he struggled to get his pipe lit. Steve, smiling at him in the dim light of their tent. Steve, kissing him like they could put the whole goddamn war on pause just for them, like nothing else mattered when it was just down to the two of them. 

God, but he was so stupid in love back then. It’s strange to think that he ever loved anyone with such a bright, uncomplicated fervor. 

“No,” Bucky says, finally. “No, it really wasn’t.”

.

It grates at him, how he can never talk about Steve, not really, not with anyone other than Sam. Certainly not with the Avengers, who have a hard time looking him dead in the eye and who used to crack uncomfortable jokes whispered behind his back when they thought he couldn’t hear. People have always had a hard time separating between fiction and reality with him and Steve, so that’s nothing new.

It’s a relief, in a way, when he hangs up the shield -- not because he doesn’t want it anymore. Not because wearing that uniform didn’t save his fucking life because it did, _it did_ , in every way that really counts. But hell, if he isn’t tired of looking other people in the eye and seeing himself defined through the distorted lense of a ghost, through what they think he does and does not mean to Steve’s legacy and to Steve’s heart. 

He is more than one thing -- more than Steve’s dead partner, more than Natasha’s lover, more than the Winter Soldier or Captain America or the boy who fell in love with his best friend a whole century in the past. 

He doesn’t talk about it with Natasha, although probably he could because she gets it, she always has -- she carries the weight of her lost loves like an honor she wants to be worthy of. It doesn’t feel right, though. Natasha and him, they scraped together their shared wounds and tried to build a life out of the ashes and he doesn’t want to bring his old hurts into their shared space. After Steve comes back, alive and well and whole, just the thought of it seems dishonest to everything they ever tried to build. 

‘Course, he fucks it up with Natasha too and maybe that shouldn’t come as a surprise but it does, anyways. 

Bucky is more than one thing but these days, he’s not exactly sure what that means just yet.

.

He runs.

He runs and he invites Daisy Johnson to come along with him because she’s the closest thing he’s got these days to a brother-in-arms, to that simple, easy friendship earned through bloodied knuckles and broken noses that was once as familiar to him as breathing. 

He still doesn’t know who he is just yet but space is wide and open and filled with limitless possibilities, and he might finally be on the right track.

.

“I’m so fuckin’ sorry, Johnson.”

Daisy lies prone in the sterile, cold whiteness of her bunk, with half her torso covered in bandages. He spent the better part of the last hour waiting for the blood to stop up enough so that he could thread a needle and stitch her up and even now, when they’re both reasonably sure that she’s gonna make it, he still feels the guilt settle cold and heavy in his gut. 

He’s never liked this part. 

_“More than God, more than country -- it’s the soldier next to him he fights for.”_ That’s what Steve used to say and it might as well have been him that took the knife to the gut with how much just thinking that can suddenly make Bucky miss Steve like it’s a brand new hurt all over again, instead of a century-old ache. 

The trouble is, him and Daisy, they’re not soldiers. Or they’re not supposed to be, anyways, and Steve -- Steve is billions of miles away, living another life that Bucky doesn’t know how to be apart of anymore. 

Daisy turns her head to face him and injured as she is, she still manages to lean out and punch him in the arm. “Shut the fuck up, Barnes. We both made our fair share of miscalculations out there. ‘Course, I wasn’t led around by my downstairs brain to get there but hey, nobody’s perfect.” 

Bucky rubs at two-day old stubble self-consciously. “It wasn’t -- it wasn’t that. Well,” he corrects, grinning ruefully. “It wasn’t that _entirely_. I guess...I just wanted to save a life, again. I wanted to let someone live.” 

“Well, the Nazi in deep space _was_ a surprise,” Daisy says. 

“You know, I was kind of hoping that I’d reached a point in my life where surprise Nazis would stop being a reality,” Bucky says. 

“No dice, Barnes,” Daisy says. 

“Hey, Johnson, can I tell you a secret?” 

“Sure, Barnes. As long as it doesn’t get me stabbed in the stomach again.” 

The thing is, he may not be too sure who he is just yet but he’s finally starting to see who he’s not. “I ain’t cut out to be an assassin,” Bucky says, and it is a private victory, a reminder that he is not and never will be what they made of him. 

Daisy laughs. “Yeah, you know what, Barnes? I’m starting to see that.” 

“I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to jump ship. Find a new mission to sign yourself up for because I don’t got any idea what I’m doing here, Daisy.” 

“Get your sorry face the hell out of my room,” Daisy says, pointedly ignoring him. “And go check the messages on the main console, I could’ve sworn I saw it blinking on our way in.” 

Bucky raises both hands in defeat, getting up from the rickety metal chair that he’d had parked next to her bed with a creak and a groan. He lets himself out, making his way towards the bridge’s main console. 

Daisy was right. It’s blinking with the light for an audio message, labeled only with a flashing, neon red _FROM: STEVE ROGERS_. 

Bucky sits down, hard. “Son of a bitch.”

.

He’s still in love with Steve, is the thing.

He’s tried real hard to tell himself differently, to shove it down and pretend like it was just another thing lost to the past. 

And for the most part, telling himself that worked for a good, long time. It helped that he had someone else that he was in love with, someone else that he thought maybe he could build a future with. That made it all too easy to accept Steve’s companionship in this new century and play the part of legacy and friend and ex all rolled up into one. 

Strip all that away, though, and he finds that he still can’t help but think of Steve. 

Steve, who doesn’t smoke anymore except for all of the times that he sneaks a cigarette when he thinks no one else is looking. Steve, who is proud and stubborn and who lets the job rule him in a way that he never used to. 

Steve, who is a little more worn down around the edges these days, but who burns that much brighter for how much more harder he has to fight these days to hold onto himself. 

Bucky thinks of Steve as he is, now, and all he can do is want. 

The blinking light on the console taunts him with a whole dizzying array of maybe’s and could-be’s. 

Bucky takes a deep breath and presses play.

.

_Hey, Buck -- I’m just calling to see how you’re doing. Or, no. That’s not right, not exactly. I’ve just -- I’ve got a lot to say to you and I probably should’ve written it down first but you know I’ve never been any good at speeches, not when it comes to you._

_The serum works again. Let’s start with that: I’m back to my old self. Sam’s keeping the shield, though. I’m not ready to be Captain America again. I’m not sure -- I’m not sure if I’ll ever be._

_You know, there was a time when I swore to myself that if I ever got you back, I wouldn’t take it for granted, not for a single goddamn second. But I have, haven’t I? I’ve taken you for granted. I’ve taken a lot of things for granted._

_Somewhere along the way, I started treating my heart as secondary to….to the job, to the Avengers, to whatever the latest crisis was, and every single fucking relationship in my life has suffered as a consequence._

_I don’t know what I want, anymore -- except the one thing that I do know, is that I still want you. Always have, always will._

_The rest, I guess I’ll figure out later._

_Take care of yourself out there, partner._

.

Bucky tears off his gloves to punch in the numbers for the return call. His hands are steady and it’s a funny thing ‘cause he could’ve sworn that they were gonna shake.

Steve answers on the second ring, quick enough that he might as well have been waiting around for the call. Probably, he was. Foolish, sentimental Steve -- he hasn’t changed nearly as much as he thinks he has. 

“Buck? Is that you?” 

“Yeah, pal, it’s me,” Bucky says, leaning into the mic. There’s an idea forming in his mind and he thinks it might just be a damn good one. 

“I was thinking since you have some time off, now -- how do you feel about space?”


End file.
